


In A World

by Elle_Monson



Series: Life is Swift [2]
Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/F, Healing, Hope, Sad but SOFT AF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:34:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23052535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elle_Monson/pseuds/Elle_Monson
Summary: Chloe passes away but Beca stumbles upon a way to connect with her anyway.Sequel to In a Crowded Room
Relationships: Chloe Beale/Beca Mitchell
Series: Life is Swift [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1758394
Comments: 18
Kudos: 63





	In A World

Aubrey plans the funeral. How could Beca? She’s so numb that even though she shows up for Chloe’s memorial she doesn’t really feel like she’s there. Aubrey plans a tasteful service and Beca has only one stipulation. No singing. Not that there’s any music left in the world anyway.

She crosses her arms and doesn’t say a word to anyone at the service. She refuses to go to Chloe’s mothers’ house where well-wishers are no doubt flooding the place with casseroles and baked goods. She has no interest in public displays of despair.

Beca can’t imagine life without Chloe but it keeps on happening around her. Waking up is such a nightmare. In her dreams, Chloe is still alive. But then even her dreams turn on her and Chloe starts appearing sickly or at the bottom of a lake or sucked into the sky in a catastrophic weather event, always out of reach.

It’s hell.

It’s hell because mornings were always Chloe’s thing. Beca would wake up to the smell of coffee and the sound of humming. Chloe was the quintessential morning person, getting up early to run, shower, and bop around the house for a while before Beca would even think of cracking her eyes open. She would always crawl back into bed around nine and cuddle Beca awake even though Beca would squirm away and beg for five more minutes.

Now Beca just wakes up to darkness.

**

It’s been a few months and Beca has been isolating herself at home. Her dad calls and checks up on her from time to time, but most people seem content to give her space which is good because she doesn’t feel like being social anyway. She orders takeout and keeps to herself.

One day she’s browsing Reddit on her phone in bed. It's just something mindless to keep her mind from wandering too much. She’s getting up to walk to the bathroom and she drops her phone and it plops in a funny way under the bed.

Beca kneels down on the floor and she sees a stack of leather books shoved under Chloe’s side of the bed next to the Hunger Games series. She stops and stares for a moment. She hasn’t seen these before. Why hasn’t she seen these before?

Beca opens one of the books and sees Chloe’s neat cursive across the top of the first page.

_March 12 th, 2011_

_Well they don’t MEAN never ending at Olive Garden when they advertise the breadsticks._

It’s a journal. Beca feels her heart take off to the races. She can’t believe what she’s seeing. Her face cracks into a big smile and it _hurts_. She hasn’t smiled like this in ages.

Beca organizes all the journals in chronological order and starts reading the first one.

_January 25 th, 2006_

_I just realized I’ve had this for a month and haven’t written a single word. Here are some words I guess!_

Beca reads and reads. Chloe’s words are like a shot of morphine for her mood. For the first time in a long time Beca feels blood rush to her face and her nerves crackling with energy. She sits on the floor and reads until her back and neck ache from hunching over. The world feels a little less dark and a little less lonely.

**

Time passes and Beca has to wean herself down to only reading a page or two a day. She likes to take her laptop and one of Chloe’s journals to an overlook Chloe would always insist they hike up to on sunny days. She’s left the studio on an unpaid leave of absence for months now, with no interest in composing. But she picks up some copywriting and basic programming freelance work to make a little cash.

In high school, Chloe wrote about random things: lots of crushes, classes, her parents, and friends.

Beca’s own laugh startles her when she barks it out amused at Chloe lamenting over being the worst player on her soccer team. She’d seen pictures of Chloe in a soccer uniform as a little kid, wearing number 13 in bright yellow, but she’d never asked about it.

_February 25 th, 2008_

_I was playing defense - left side - and tripped over the ball. The other team managed to score and our goalie had never been scored on by that team. She was so pissed. I don’t know why they put me on defense or really anywhere near the ball._

Some of it is so sugar sweet that it makes Beca’s eyes water.

**

Beca skips the Bellas reunion that Christmas. It’s too painful. But a few days later Cynthia-Rose comes over and Beca pulls out her phone with a picture she’d taken of a page of one of the journals. She doesn’t tell Cynthia-Rose where she got it from, but they use the recipe Chloe had left on the page to bake cookies.

It’s pleasant to spend time working on something with a friend.

**

Beca’s favorite ritual by far is cozying up with big pillows and low lighting and reading the journals and then holding one close to her chest until she drifts off.

It doesn’t take too long for Beca to get to the college years.

_August 14 th, 2008_

_I HATE my roommate, she’s NUTS. Living with her is like living in a prison. I practically have a curfew, I can’t ever sleep in because she does Pilates at six every morning, and I’m pretty sure she has a nanny cam so I can’t bring anyone back to the room._

Beca is a little shocked. Aubrey was Chloe’s first roommate in college, that’s how they met. But neither of them ever said anything about not getting along. Beca had assumed they’d been best friends from the get-go.

She can’t help but text Aubrey about it and they meet up for brunch one Sunday so Aubrey can fill Beca in on all of her and Chloe’s freshman year drama. They laugh until their eyes tear up over Crab Cake Benedict. 

Aubrey tells Beca a story about waking up for class to find Chloe missing, going to class, and when she got back to the room Chloe was asleep spooning a bottle of V8 Splash, wearing Uggs and a winter hat.

“She was this Bohemian free spirit and I was this uptight, hyper vigilant girl. In the end she made me loosen up and I like to think I helped her focus at least a little bit.”

Beca smiles. “It’s like together you two brought out the best in each other.”

“That or we helped suppress some of each other’s bad habits. Either way I can’t imagine how anxious and miserable I would have turned out without her. You were the same with us, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well I’m positive you helped me let my hair down my senior year.”

“That was sort of an accident I just wanted to win and prove you wrong.”

“Maybe but you still helped me. And as far as Chloe goes you know she could never really commit to anyone until she met you. You changed the game for her. She was so obsessed with you for so long and you made her so happy. When you were with Jesse, I would offer to make her a dart board of his face. I was mostly joking but she would always tell me ‘No, as long as he makes Beca happy that’s all that matters.’ But when you two finally got over yourselves and admitted your feelings to each other…well let’s just say I’ve never gotten a more excited phone call.”

Beca chokes up a little bit and she can’t respond. Aubrey grabs her hand and squeezes.

“You were the love of her life…nothing can change that.”

**

Beca feels her face get hot when she reads about Chloe’s trysts and flings. She wonders if Chloe had been moonlighting as a romance writer because her descriptions of her free love induced hookups are pure erotica.

Beca can’t even be mad at it. Chloe sometimes brought out Beca’s protective and jealous streak, but she was a high schooler who’d never laid eyes on Chloe when all this happened. When Chloe describes her first girl on girl experience in explicit detail Beca feels a _teeny_ bit warm and fuzzy and lightheaded for the first time in ages.

She debates whether she should do it or not but, in the end, curiosity gets the best of her and she sends Tom a Facebook message and asks if he remembers meeting Chloe. He answers her a couple hours later with his condolences and then tells Beca about how he met Chloe.

“Chloe was so sweet she was like human angel food cake. Probably one of my favorite people from undergrad. I met her because she was wandering outside my dorm in the middle of the night. She said she liked walking around at night listening to music when she couldn’t sleep. She had a lime green early gen iPod she took everywhere I swear.”

Beca remembers that relic. It’s somewhere in the house. She makes a mental note to find it.

“Anyway, I was locked out of my building and she climbed a tree to crawl through my window so she could let me in. Scared the shit out of my roommate but when he saw how cute she was let me tell you he changed his tune real quick.”

Beca can’t help but chuckle. Chloe _never_ had boundaries. If she did, she probably never would have dragged Beca out of her shell, out of the closet, and into their life together. Beca’s glad that she wasn’t the only one to have benefitted from one of Chloe’s signature personality traits.

**

When Beca reaches Chloe’s (first) senior year in the journals she braces herself. She’s not sure if she’s ready to read Chloe’s most intimate thoughts and critiques of her.

_August 20 th, 2012_

_I met the most incredible girl today-_

Beca takes a breath. Ok. This isn’t too bad. Here we go.

_Her name is Amy and she’s the most interesting person I’ve ever met. She’s so bold and beautiful and confident. She has the voice of an absolute Siren and I love her!_

Seriously!?

But it doesn’t take too long for Beca to finally make an appearance

_September 10 th, 2012_

_I walked in on a girl in the shower AGAIN today. Not for the same reason as last time although I wouldn’t mind doing that with her too. But this time it was because she had a Broadway caliber voice. If she doesn’t show up at auditions, I’m going to find her in the shower again with Aubrey this time just to prove her voice is amazing so she can be in the Bellas. She was kind of shy but we’ll get through that._

_Oh, I think Tom is in love with me. Oops!_

Beca can’t get the smile off her face even though she rolls her eyes in embarrassment at herself.

For a bit Chloe talks about Fat Amy more than anyone else and that prompts Beca to Facetime her Australian friend.

“Well of course, you were my first friend in college, but Chloe was like my spirit animal in those early days. When I had trouble with choreo she would stay late and walk me through it. She set me up with a ton of different guys. She always remembered my birthday. I know you miss her Beca, I do too. Why don’t you come down and stay with me in Oz for a couple of weeks?”

And that’s how Beca finds herself in Australia in Fat Amy’s mansion. It’s a shock to the system for sure because Fat Amy literally has shirtless men cleaning her house, cooking for her, tending to the pool. Beca's long over shirtless guys, no matter how hot, but the company is still nice.

She spends a lot of time on the beach alone but at night she and Fat Amy get into some good silver tequila and Beca finds herself laughing and laughing as her oldest friend entertains her.

Before she leaves, she tries surfing. Chloe had done it as a child and journaled about missing it while living in landlocked Atlanta.

**

Beca isn’t exactly _shocked_ when she reads about Chloe and Stacie’s contest that they had called ‘The Slut Cut’ where hooking up (with enthusiastically consenting partners who were informed about the casual nature of the encounters) with different people in different ways netted them points. Chloe kept score and would add to it occasionally, but Stacie was ahead most of the time.

Beca knew about Chloe’s hedonistic streak before she and Beca settled down, but she goes to meet up with Stacie at Bella’s little pre-school ‘Back to School Extravaganza’ pageant. The kids are so cute, and it touches a very, very soft spot in Beca’s heart.

They go over to Stacie’s for a night cap and when Bella is tucked in after Beca had read her Goodnight Moon three times, they pop open a bottle of wine and Stacie tells Beca all about her old memories of Chloe and their little contest.

“The problem Chloe had is she refused to sleep with anyone who was obviously in love with her because she didn’t want to hurt anyone and _everyone_ she met was in love with her. We were so young and dumb. But Chloe always wanted to connect with people in such a positive way.”

**

It’s not all blissful, lighthearted memories. Beca has to process Chloe’s painful emotions over Beca being so clueless about Chloe’s feelings for her for years. 

Even worse is the commentary about Beca and Chloe’s potential future once the journals catch up to their relationship- a future that will never happen.

_November 1 st, 2017_

_We had the best Halloween. Beca finally agreed to do a couple’s costume with me and we dressed up as the Chainsmokers (even though she says they’re hacks, I’ve caught her singing along to Something Just Like This in the shower multiple times). Well I dressed up as a chain and she smoked all night._

_I was freaking out the whole night until I finally got ahold of one of the cigarettes and realized they were fakes._

_Anyway, the cutest kids came to the door. I’m torn on what was my favorite group. A group of little boys were dressed up as the Stranger Things kids but there were a pair of identical twin girls that pretended they were from the Portal video game. They had portal guns and cardboard cut outs and they ran and jumped all over the front porch like they were teleporting all over the place._

_I don’t care if I have boys or girls, but I cannot wait to have babies with Beca. I really hope they look like her._

This tears Beca’s heart out because she and Chloe had talked about kids, but the time had never been right.

She has to take a few nights off reading to shake off the guilt. She uses to free time to watch some YouTube lectures on meditation and attempts to start a practice. When Halloween comes, she follows the tradition that Chloe had insisted upon by giving out full size candy bars only.

**

It’s a treat to find Chloe’s poetry. Chloe had shared a few lyrics with Beca but there’s pages of it in her journals. Beca takes the best bits and calls her old boss from the studio. She promises a couple weeks of work in return for a recording session. 

Beca invites Jessica and Ashley to record some songs using the lyrics and poems Chloe left behind. They’re not bangers or hits but the songs are sweet, and heartfelt. Beca sends mp3s to all the Bellas and they all adore it. They joke that Chloe is like one of those artists who releases music from the afterlife. It's a little dark but it makes Beca laugh anyway. 

The weeks she works go well and her old boss offers Beca her old job back. Beca accepts on a trial basis.

**

Beca is getting ready to go to the Bellas ugly sweater Christmas party. She overestimates the amount of time she’ll need to get ready and drive over to Lilly’s house. She can’t go early since Flo has promised to pick her up.

She grabs Chloe’s journal that she’s currently reading. It’s the second-to-last one and Beca only has a couple of pages left.

She turns to the last page.

_July 19 th, 2018_

_I went for a hike today, and it was raining. My socks got wet. That gave me a blister. My clothes got completely soaked The trail was covered in mud and the sun was nowhere to be found. But oh my goodness the ferns were just so rich and green and beautiful._


End file.
